Why CEDRIC Centre is so vitally necessary
Beginning the new year with mindful-ness and veggies :)
Tina Budeweit-Weeks is a member of the CEDRIC Success Team in the role of staff writer and executive assistant for Michelle Morand. Her philosophy has always been one of self-nurturance and dignity. In support of the complex difficulties clients may experience around regaining a healthy balance, Tina’s writing is designed to sympathize, support, encourage and inform. Although there are many similarities in Tina’s process, she is not a client, but a hard working, behind-the-scenes member of the team, dedicated to helping the CEDRIC Centre stay current and effective.
Tina’s Journey – Conscious Competence : Using Winter Wisely – Learning to live with intention
The blizzards of 2008 have made way for the blizzards, windstorms and tumultuous rainstorms of 2009. Oh joy. Perfect weather for staying warm and dry inside.
I am currently craving more than food at the moment. It’s sunshine I need, accompanied with the smell of undergrowth burgeoning with life as the leafy blanket covering the soil warms up and sets shoots and mushrooms skyward.
It reminds me of where I am this process. Although there is not much going on, on the surface, there is a lot happening underneath as my roots find purchase and begin the long yearly traditions of gathering nutrition, planning growth and then of growing. I am hoping that my process of getting a grip on my weight gain and turning it around responds from a similar perspective.
I’m taking this opportunity to develop and create an environment that nurtures affirmative change. In my social world, in my private world or where I am when I am at work, there are developments at hand that allow me to start fresh at this exciting time of my life. I am no longer a mother, no longer a student, now I’m a cosmopolitan woman with a vibrant life, a great career, a safe and stable home where I am less concerned about fiscal shortcomings than I can ever remember. This IS the kind of place where I can feel safe starting anew.
So the lingering winter can do what it wants. As much as I want to get on my bike to and from work, it can wait. For now, I’m exploring organic venues for food for my home, recipes and ideas that will support my need for more fresh fruits, veggies and nuts in my diet, as well as exercise regimes that stimulate rather than exhaust.
As a rather large seagull has landed outside the office window and startled me, I’m reminded by providence to keep myself available for spontaneous opportunities that will arise allowing me to maximize my life, as I like to say, it may be short, but we can make our lives as wide as we want them to be.
Michelle speaks of Conscious Competence when refering to our Core Beliefs and I have a similar philosophy to living consciously. It is through ‘Living with Intention’ that the most positive steps are taken. By ‘Living with Intention’, I mean to live with awareness. Know your shortcomings, deal accordingly. Know your choices, refer to the pertinent one that applies to the present. With repeated reference to the skills that allow one to walk lightly on the earth, to be gentle with themselves in their food choices and their self-talk, as Michelle says, these behaviours morph into Unconscious Competence, Livng with Intention as second nature or our natural response.
Change can be a good thing. It allows our roots to be fertilized by the long winters and it is a way of setting our intentions so that we can make our will be known, invoke the outcomes in the distance we wish to connect to, and then surrender ourselves to living with integrity until we can connect on the timeline to where we have set our sights.
Goals need to be set, and in these dark, rainy weeks before spring, there is no better time to think about what it is we want to attract into our lives in the coming year.
Can we get ourselves back to balance?
I am reminded of US President-Elect, Barrack Obama’s determined cry… ‘YES WE CAN!’Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Self
Leave a Comment (0) →Tina’s Journey – ‘Skiing’ all year
Reading the CEDRIC Core Beliefs Handbook, it’s no surprise to me that by looking to the source of my inner diminishment, my childhood, I am able to put the finger right on the basis of CEDRIC teachings. Core Beliefs are really the foundation for any psyche and as I learn to reshuffle my personal priorities and internalized understandings, the difficult issues of low self-esteem and lowered self worth in my past are deeply ingrained and something I must focus on overcoming everyday. Here’s how I’m working through this: Putting oneself first is no mean feat when I’ve spend the last twenty plus years putting the needs of my children ahead of myself as they grew up, as it should be. The danger here, though, is that there is a tendency to hide behind distractions such as letting the priorities of others become a deterrent to our dealing with our own needs. Eating right and regularly contribute to maintaining a holistic lifestyle, but when one is unable to ascertain what one needs because historically the needs of others have overridden our personal needs, unhealthy habits become the norm. Habits like snacking, caving to temptations, and unintentional imbibing that is a knee jerk response to frustration all contribute to harming one’s body and one’s body image and as a result, one’s self esteem faces a downward spiral. Finding the balance has always been the trick for this Libran, who’s scales are always teetering and rarely level. Striving for harmony and harmonious surroundings is much easier now that my life has changed so much. Not a parent any longer, nor am I a student. My newfound identity as an independent woman finds me in a loved relationship, both within, with myself, and without, with my hubby, which distracts me much less now.Tina’s Journey – ‘Skiing’ all year
The Core Beliefs handbook suggests one should look to where in their childhood they first felt blindsided and their delicate self esteem began taking abuse. Its easy for me to pinpoint this. As a child, I grew up in a home where my mother was oblivious of the impact of her callousness on her two daughters. It wasn’t until after years of counselling and self work that I have learned to not assign blame in my mother’s direction however. She was and always will be a victim of World War II, having grown up in Germany during the war years as the oldest girl in a large family that was headed by an authoritarian father who had no business parenting, and who had no idea how his corporal attitudes would reflect on his grandchildren when his children became adults and had kids of their own. My mother dismissed counselling, denying it of any value, believing it was for ‘crazy people’. As a result, the Russian soldiers who caused her family so much grief are still winning – still there in her mind with their long-ago abuses reflected through all her daily actions. When Anthony Robbins, the famous motivational guru, talks about people’s emotional winters, I think of my mother, who exemplifies the role of eternal victim. Unlike her, I am a survivor, excelling in spite of my life and history, not because of it. Tony Robbins says that when people face their emotional winters, face their core challenges, some people go skiing, some choose to freeze to death. Mom chose the latter, but in my best interests, I’ve not only learned to ‘ski’, but I’ve raised my children into adulthood with the skills needed to face their hardships in the affirmative – to take the lessons presented by the current challenges and ski with them. My mother, as a result, was very hard on my headstrong and precocious self. Her constant diminishment, her tendency to hit and scream without warning, caused me to have extremely low self esteem until well into my 30’s, when I began in earnest, to rectify this, through counselling. The hard work has paid off, as I now have a fairly solid self image that I and noone else has defined. In spite of this, though, it’s ironic that the ingrained, ancient self perceptions planted by my mother have caused my ‘Drill Sergeant’ to have my mother’s soft, clipped voice with its germanic/British accent. I can say, encouragingly, that as one becomes more skilled in handling challenges, in staying in the love, in staying positive, that Drill Sergeant’s voice becomes much more sporadic and definitely less vehement. Now, when I hear that internal critic speaking to me in a voice that my close friends would NEVER use towards me, I take it as a sign that I am tired, overworked, out of energy, hungry or just needing to change my focus from one of outwardly dealing with the needs of others, and instead, begin considering what my own needs are. One priceless counselling experience really helped me address the tendency of my Drill Sergeant’s callous opinion of myself to blindside my confidence which often contributed to causing me to second-guess myself. This innovative counselor listened to me as I outlined some of my history and after thinking a bit, she replied, “When you hear that internal dialogue of self-diminishment, instead of giving it undue energy, just acknowledge it… just try responding minimally by saying to yourself ‘There it is.’ and then return to whatever you were doing.” That suggestion has proven to be pure gold. The old me was prone to stop in my tracks and take on the Drill Sergeant’s barrage of self-critical input, disrupting my confidence. By applying the simple words ‘There it is’, and consciously choosing to not let it get to me, I circumvented a very old knee-jerk response, and ultimately, it changed my life. It wasn’t easy at first – old habits die hard and the Drill Sergeant doesn’t give up without a concerted battle. I perservered with repeated applications of the ‘There it is’ exercise, and like new muscle using repetition, I was able to mute self-deprecating internal dialogue much more easily. By identifying where my personal perspective of core esteem began, I can lay those blue meanies to rest, redeem myself for the valid and capable person I have become, and move ahead. Maybe that’s the lesson to glean from this whole challenge. The red flag that flies up when I hear the Drill Sergeant now, tells me not to listen to the words of the DS but to the existence of my personal state changing to one of more accumulated stress than I can bear, and to start to focus on myself immediately. I hope my insights around core beliefs have a positive effect on your process. As we journey together towards wholeness, we need to know that those who try to diminish us exist (that’s self preservation). We should pay attention to how they operate and where they come from, but we don’t need to give them energy, and that goes for the ‘Drill Sergeant’ as well.Newsletter Archive
Newsletter Archive – Food is Not the Problem
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Leave a Comment (1) →Tina’s Journey – Caving to the Craving: Complications afoot
I’m reading Tips for Natural Eating 1- Michelle’s blog entry regarding the tendency for people who have issues around food to override their natural responses and who feel hunger when their body isn’t who is directing the signal, but their mind. This led me to the topic for this blog edition, as I am currently going through a series of explorations with my diet to see what it is that is making my edema kick in, as I have ankle and foot swelling episodes that generally follow recent jumps off the wagon of my eating healthy.
In light of our previous mention of the Drill Sergeant influencing control over our common sense, I’ve pretty much stifled that and yet, I am still dealing with weight gain. As a way of remaining pro-active during this confusion, I am avidly researching anything that has to do with food, cravings, incomplete digestion etc. I have been continuously perplexed because as a rule, I eat healthy. In my deductive process, I have been to western doctors who tell me that my weight gain is to be expected. It is the relative outcome to the amount of calories that I take in, doh! At the same time, I have a great rapport with an eastern medicine doctor who gives me roots to simmer and make tea out of, which improves my liver function as he’s identified that my liver is working much harder than it should.
With my recent discovery of sugar additives becoming more prevalent in our food, this is all starting to make more sense.
Remember that I am a shrewd shopper who rarely if ever brings home snacks, baked goods, candy, pop or other such groceries that I deem pretty useless. Although my life is sedentary at present, I’m not taking in that much, however, I HAVE been caving to cravings around caramel, jelly candies, gummy bears and worms and have been known to occaisionally down the entire Costco container of them. A decade ago, the International Delight creamer additives led my weight to skyrocket 30 lbs in a single summer. I cut that out based simply on my realizing it was the contributor to my gain, but still I crave Macdonald’s coffee and Tim Horton’s Ice Caps. I cave to the craving now and then and almost instantly rue the decision as my shoes begin to tighten on my size 12 feet.
Recently, I discovered an article online that warns about the dangers of ingesting High Fructose Corn Syrup or HFCS. There is a current flood of information in the dieting scene regarding this substance that has been added to our food by agribusiness as a sweetener since the 1970’s that digests in a particular way that leads the body to send the wrong messages to the brain regarding hunger responses.
Corn and its byproducts is an enormous billion dollar agribusiness that claims to have a solution to world fuel shortages and has contributed to the demise of the sugar cane and beet industry. As corn is produced en masse at the expense of other crops, that which isn’t converted into ethanol for fuel, becomes disposable. A Japanese scientist in 1970 discovered that if you take that remaining corn, attach a fungus to it, then stir in a bacteria and let ferment, the resultant goo becomes a high fructose corn syrup concentrate that is easy to add to regular corn syrup, it is an inexpensive additive, making the corn syrup stretch a lot further and also doing several things as a result.
One result is that by adding High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) to corn syrup and then that corn syrup to anything, the final product has an extended shelf life, like margarine, which is only one molecule removed from plastic. The HFCS food product becomes suspended in a state that no longer has the same decomposition tendencies. This makes digesting this product a challenge for the human body however. Not only does HFCS make things hard to digest, but the liver becomes overworked in the doing of it, where sugars in our body create insulin, HFCS does no such thing. At the same time, tests done recently have shown that continued digestion of HFCS sends false messages to the brain that indicate hunger is present and to add to the evil, those cravings become specific for products that contain… you guessed it, more HFCS.
I am beginning to suspect that my errant consumption of HFCS foods is contributing to my weight gain, combined with other factors, such as menopausal body, sedentary lifestyle, access to more food. When I started to become aware of the prevalence of HFCS in our food, it was natural to start looking at ingredients of foods and it was harder, to my amazement, to find food that DIDN’T have it than it was to find foods that did. It is labeled in many different ways and there is no consistent vernacular for it. I suspect the food industry disguises it by not addressing it in its easily recognizable initials. HFCS is present on the label if its posted as ‘liquid sugar’, corn syrup, fructose, glucose as well as corn sugars. That’s not to say all corn syrup has HFCS, but how does one know and wouldn’t it be prudent to conclude that by eliminating all corn syrups, one lowers the risk of exposure to HFCS?
Also, the use of this sugar additive is not new, imagine that you have been ingesting HFCS in greater and greater quantities since 1970. For some of us, that’s our whole lives!
Canada produces less HFCS and uses less as a result. Europe is vigilant against it and baby food companies avoid it in their baby food, but use it in their juices for adults. What message does that send you?
I’m beginning to narrow down all the foods that contain HFCS and as strong as my cravings make me yearn for them, my common sense is able to override those pangs because that stuff is contributing to my overall health demise and it’s going to STOP!
This is why, in a sense, I am at a place in my life that is so readily able to work with Michelle, and synchronistically at a time when I NEED to become more proactive about the borderline obese physical state we find me at, as I post this.
So not only do we have to be vigilant about how often our body hits us with messages of hunger, and if it is a physical or emotional hunger, we also must be aware of the things that we ingest which offer up more confusion in that end. Imagine not knowing the most pertinent information that any product with HFCS in it will send us messages to eat when we’re not hungry, and not only that, but to crave a product that will provide our addicted bodies more of the dreaded HFCS it craves. Articles I’ve read online, and I will add the urls to several after this blog, have also stated that to eliminate this scourge to our wellbeing from our diets, we are to expect the body to retaliate as withdrawal symptoms ranging from severe headaches and dizziness, nausea and intense cravings can result.
HFCS has been introduced to almost everything we eat as a way for the product manufacturers to cut costs on sweetening agents and still claim the sweetener to be ‘natural’ or 100% original. Law suits have drawn attention to the mislabeling involved, causing large food corporations to change the semantics on their labels from stating they are 100% organic, to state similar things that are just as easily confused with wholesome foods. I don’t know how ‘natural’ it is, when I looked at the aerial photos of industrial plants provided in one article, that are 5 square miles of pipes and buildings which is apparently what it takes to turn corn into HFCS with the bacteria and fungal additions.
By becoming vigilant in our desire to heal from issues contributing to tendencies to use food inappropriately, we must also be consciously critical thinkers when it comes to WHAT kind of foods we are permitting into the sacred temples that are our bodies as well as how much and how often.
Hard to quell a food obsession by coping with it, with the resultant vigilance bordering on food paranoia thanks to the development of Big Brother food supplier agendas, isn’t it? Don’t even get me started on the genetically modified corns that those Big Brother consortiums are imposing on the world farming industry.
What can we do as the ‘little people’?
The best suggestion of all the articles I read on the perils of ingesting HFCS, stick to the outside aisles of the supermarket. Organic vegetables and fruits grown relatively locally (to avoid the pesticides and slack regulations of Mexican and Chinese providers), breads that are baked locally from actual sugar and not corn sugars, nuts, seeds and grains that will swell or germinate if given half a chance and meats that are not modified with additives, preferably organic. Fruit drinks that claim to be healthy are big culprits of adding HFCS, including Gatorade. As are ice creams that I used to think were the better brands, and every other canned or processed food item. Mayo, salad dressings, Ketchup, 7 up… its across the board.
Do research online on products and become more pro-active by emailing companies and informing them that you think their decision to sweeten their product with HFCS is in poor regard for their customer base.
One step at a time… one label at a time. Just don’t be a sheeple around what you eat. Know that what we are eating is not nourishing us if its killing us. And THEN watch your urges towards Hunger, as Michelle suggests, in Natural Eating 1. Pick up where Michelle guides you to suggestions of carrying almonds as a test to asses s just how often you respond to the craving and reach for food.
URLS of interest: Pro and Con articles on High Fructose Corn Syrup
From Green Magazine: High Fructose Corn Syrup – A Not So Sweet Surprise – Get the rest of the facts! Click here.
From the Washington Post: High Fructose Corn Syrup: Not so sweet for the planet. Click here.
For an intriguing article accompanied by photos of big industry related to the corn industry from the website SPROL: Click here.
From ‘In the kitchen with Mother Linda’ found online at: Click here.
Tina Budeweit-Weeks is a member of the CEDRIC Success Team in the role of staff writer and executive assistant for Michelle Morand. Her philosophy has always been one of self-nurturance and dignity. In support of the complex difficulties clients may experience around regaining a healthy balance, Tina’s writing is designed to sympathize, support, encourage and inform. Although there are many similarities in Tina’s process, she is not a client, but a hard working, behind-the-scenes member of the team, dedicated to helping the CEDRIC Centre stay current and effective.
Video Bundle
Video Bundle. Our unique and successful healing program is now available to you in a new 3 Video set! The CEDRIC Centre is pleased to offer three new educational Videos to support you in your recovery from disordered eating and the diet mentality. Whether you overeat, restrict, purge or all of the above, these videos will educate you on why you do what you do and on exactly what you can do to begin to have a peaceful and easy relationship with food while effortlessly maintaining a natural weight for your body.
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Leave a Comment (0) →The Art of Healthy Relationships
True interdependence is the ability to be fully yourself in a relationship with someone else and allow them to do the same. Interdependence is the art of allowing someone to be there to support you without feeling “needy” or somehow “obligated” to them. In healthy relationships we are able to ask directly for what we need and our requests are respected and validated by ourselves and by others even if they can’t be met at that time or by that person: it’s safe to ask and it’s okay to hear the word “no”. (more…)Posted in: Video
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